


I Saw A Fading Fire

by geckoholic



Series: author's favorites [21]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-04 01:29:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2904314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/pseuds/geckoholic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>What Natasha remembers is this: snow and freezing cold and this station. The commander had found her in the ruins of the city when she was just a girl, and had assigned her this post. He's been gone, too, for a long time now, like everyone else. But Natasha is still here. She's still watching out for new transmissions. </em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Saw A Fading Fire

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CloudAtlas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloudAtlas/gifts).



> Well, uhm. I totally set out to write you that radiohost AU, although for Peggy and Steve, but I couldn't bend it to my will. So I gave some of your other requests and interests a shake instead, and out came... uh, this. 
> 
> Beta-read by andibeth82 and yohkobennington, both of whom I owe for brainstorming with me as well. Thank you! ♥ All remaining mistakes are mine. 
> 
> Title is from "Lost Without You" by Sleeperstar.

Natasha doesn't remember a time before the cold. Not really, anyway – she has some distant memories of her parents, of a home that was surrounded by green grass and of swimming in a nearby lake during the summer. But all of that is gone now.

What Natasha remembers is this: snow and freezing cold and this station. The commander had found her in the ruins of the city when she was just a girl, and had assigned her this post. He's been gone, too, for a long time now, like everyone else. But Natasha is still here. She's still watching out for new transmissions. 

It has been quiet for awhile. Some days, Natasha isn't sure if there's anyone still out there. Must be, she figures; she can't be the last one to survive. She can't be alone. Someone will come for her. And until then, she will do her duty, she will make the commander and the parents whose faces she can't recall proud. 

 

***

 

The only company Natasha has is a cat. She's black and has eyes that are huge and knowing, and she just appeared one day. Natasha doesn't know where she came from, how she made it through the cold on her own, but the commander once told her that animals are a great deal more resilient than humans. Humans are fragile, he said, breakable and weak, and also too likely to bend under pressure. A cat or a dog would never consider walking over the bodies of their kind to save themselves. Humans, on the other hand? They're selfish by nature, their own preservation is the strongest instinct they possess. 

Natasha pours hot water into a plastic cup she took from the shelter, stirs it with her spoon, the cat purring on her lap. Maybe it's a good thing she's alone. If someone else were in the station with her, they could have tried to walk out of here over _her_ body years ago. 

 

***

 

Her days are always the same. Get up. Bathroom. Breakfast rations. The first shift in front of the monitors in the red room. Lunch rations. The second shift. Dinner rations. An hour to herself – she's made it through most books in the station twice – then sleep. Do it all over again the next day, just as she was taught. 

There's a protocol for new transmissions, and she reads it every week, so she doesn't forget. She'll need it eventually, she tells herself. And when she does, she'll be prepared. 

On the morning it actually happens, though, she's anything but. 

 

***

 

Natasha is sitting at the brazen table in her private quarter, waiting for the water to boil so she can have breakfast, when the alarm sounds and engulfs the whole station in the vibrating red glow that gave the transmission room its name. She hadn’t remembered how loud the noise is, after such a long time, and she covers her ears as she gets up and runs to the computers without bothering to get fully dressed. It's audio only; the cameras went out while she was still being trained. 

The voice on the other end of the transmission is male, sounds thin and strained and far away. “Anyone there? Anyone listening? Oh fuck, please. I need help.” 

Natasha frowns. She clears her throat. She pushes the button that will let her reply. “Yes. This is transmission relay number zero-four-eight, formerly Stalingrad. Who are you?” 

“Thank god,” the man says, and he sounds like someone took a weight off his chest. “Barton. I am – well, I was, I suppose, with the US military. They sent us here to figure out if anyone survived this side of the ocean. But that was months ago. The others are dead. I'm the only one left. Please. Please, help me.” 

She's not sure what to do. Her most important order is to never leave her post. “How did you get here?” 

“A vehicle,” he answers. “A tank, really, to break through the ice. But there's hardly any fuel left, and if it runs out before I find someplace else to hide from the cold... Please.” 

He's desperate. Natasha hasn't heard another human voice in years, but it's in his tone, in the way it breaks at the end. She thinks about cats and dogs and about the selfish human nature. She's safer on her own. But she has been alone for such a long time.

The cat looks at her with her knowing eyes and meows. Natasha nods and makes a decision. “I have your location on the display. It's not far. I'll come and get you.” 

 

***

 

All these years in the station, safe and sheltered and relatively warm, made her forget exactly how cold it really is out there. She's wearing a snow suit that has warm water circulating all around her torso and her limbs. It shields her face and filters her breath, but somehow the freezing cold still manages to crawl in through the seams. It's like a shock, a punch, a slap to the face. But she marches on, her eyes focused on the handheld device that tells her which way to go, the blinking green dot that marks the first other person she'll meet in... She can't even remember. There's another suit in her backpack, for him, and excitement curses through her like waves in the sea. 

Soon she can make out the vehicle in the distance, and she pockets the device, presses a small button to activate the communication system in her suit. “Come in, uh. Barton? This is zero-four-eight. I'm almost at your position.” 

The line just crackles at her, and for endless seconds she thinks she's too late. That he didn't make it, died while she was on her way. But then he coughs, a deep and rumbling sound. “Sorry. Nodded off. Heat's gone out. It's so hard to keep my eyes open.” 

Natasha walks faster, knowing that if he falls asleep he won't wake up again. 

 

***

 

She watches as he peels himself out of the suit. He's filthy, and thin. His face is obscured by a thick and unkempt beard, hair standing up every which way, some of it tangled and molted. He raises his eyebrows when he catches her staring, shrugs when all she does is give him a questioning look. 

Natasha puts his clothes into a plastic bag and guides him to the shower. After she's assured herself that he's aware enough not to pass out in there, she takes the bag he brought with him and prepares a room. Engage life support, sheets for the bed, clean clothes, a few rations, cutlery.

When she's done, she surveys her work, feeling like something's missing. It takes her a moment, but then she realizes what it is. 

She goes back to her own quarters to get one of her books and sets it on top of the stack of clothes. 

 

***

 

They sit in silence over ramen and instant coffee, each of them looking at their hands. Natasha isn't used to company, has never learned how to strike up a conversation or make another person comfortable, and while she did get taught several languages she never got to practice any of them out loud and it shows. Her English is still much better than his Russian, though, so they stick with it. 

He's quiet, doesn't talk much unless prompted. At first she thought he was afraid, mistrustful, but that's not it. The best way she can describe it is that he seems haunted, like he's got a ghost sitting on his back and is afraid of jarring it. No sudden movements, no loud words; subdued. She tries to imagine what he's been through to end up here. She's never really been outside, has been holed up until she went out to get him a few days ago. There were transmissions, in the early days, ones that showed the world freezing over, but she hardly remembers them. 

The cat rips Natasha out of her thoughts by jumping on the table, and she swats at it. “No, Liho! Get off. You're not allowed, and you know it.” 

He raises his head. “Liho? That's a strange name. Doesn't it mean, like, something evil? Bad luck?” 

“Yes.” Natasha shrugs. “It does. But I see it as protection.” 

“How?” he asks, setting his plastic spoon aside even though he’s barely touched his cup. 

“Because Liho belongs to this place, and to me. If anyone seeks to betray us, or steal from us, they will be cursed.” Natasha reaches for his cup to peek into it, finds it still almost full. “Are you finished? You should eat that. You need the sustenance.” 

He ignores her question, leans forward and gives her a small smile that looks misplaced on his haggard face. “Huh. Makes sense. I guess I better behave myself, then.” 

 

***

 

After a week, she makes him sit down in the bathroom and takes scissors to his hair and a shaving razor to his face. He keeps scratching at both, and she keeps picturing little insects crawling around in there. The commander was always strict about that, staying clean. It took some back and forth, but in the end she got the better argument – if he puts her at risk in any shape or form, she'll send him back out into the cold – and he had relented. 

He's tense. He eyes her every move, grips the edge of his chair so hard that his knuckles turn white. When she gets out the razor, he swallows hard, his adam's apple bobbing up and down. 

“I won't hurt you,” she informs him. “At least I'll try not to. And if I wanted you dead, I wouldn't do it like this, cut your throat. Too messy.” 

His eyes fall closed, and he lets out a breath that turns into a short, hollow cough. “Good to know.” 

She does nick him, twice, once on his cheek and the other time on his jaw. Nevertheless, she feels him relax under her touch. His hands still grip the chair, but loosely, and his chest rises and falls more slowly. He keeps his eyes closed throughout, and she's not sure if it's a sign of trust or if he's simply yielding to his fate. She lets her hands linger on his face longer than she has to, enjoys the sensation of someone else's skin under her finger tips, doesn't care if he notices. 

With the beard gone and the hair trimmed, he looks even more gaunt. She surveys her work, arms akimbo, and signals for him to get up. “If you don't like the ramen, there's some dried fruit in the storage. It's not to my taste, too sweet, but you could try it.” 

“I'm not hungry,” he says, coughing again. He stands, reaches for a towel to clean his face, and pushes past her through the door. For the rest of the day he stays in his quarters, and that evening, for the first time since she rescued him, he doesn't join her for dinner. 

 

***

 

The next morning, he shows up in the kitchen at breakfast time, sits down without a word, and gobbles his rations up in half the time it takes Natasha to eat hers. Ten minutes later, she's leaning on the bathroom door, listening to him heave and spit as he throws it all back up. 

It makes her own throat and stomach ache, that sound. And it won't stop. She's not sure how long he's in there for, but when he comes back out he's pale, his eyes bloodshot and wet. Natasha moves to the sink to draw him a glass of clear, cold water, and he drinks it in one go. 

“You're not well,” she observes. 

He looks away, rubs the palm of a hand over his eyes. “I didn't have anything to eat for a while, in the tank. Ran out at some point. And now it won't stay down.” 

His behavior strikes her as embarrassment, and she doesn't quite understand why. He's not in charge of how his body reacts to dire situations. It's not his fault. She entertains the thought of pointing that out, but somehow doubts it'd do much good. 

“There's some liquid meals in the storage,” she suggests instead. “We could try those. Powder to be mixed in with water, maybe you can keep that down.” 

He nods and smiles a little. “Quite the treasure trove, your storage.” 

 

***

 

Natasha keeps to her routine for most of her days – breakfast, first shift, lunch, second shift, dinner – and he hides himself away in his quarters while she's working. The time she's slotted in for herself, though, they spend together. He waits for her when she exits the transmission room, never having been told her schedule but picking up on his own. They don't talk much. He reads the book she gave him, asks her for another when he's finished, then a third. 

Soon she can't recall what it was like to be alone, can’t imagine what it’d be like not to have him around anymore. The thought scares her for reasons she can't figure out – it's not like she has to be afraid that he'll leave, where would he go – and at the same time fills her with a warm, fond sensation she faintly remembers from before. 

It's nice, not being alone. She'd forgotten how it feels. 

 

***

 

“Would you like me to show you how the red room works?” she asks one day at dinner. He used to have a purpose, like she did, and now all he does the whole day long is read and sleep. “I'm not looking to make you take over, split the shifts, but I figured... Maybe you'd enjoy having something to do.” 

He sets down the mug that holds his liquid meal. “Is that allowed?” 

Natasha shrugs her shoulders. “The commander wouldn't be pleased, I imagine, but he's not around anymore. Just you and me down here. No one will know.” 

“Then, yes. I would like you to show me,” he says, nodding. “Wouldn't want to get you in trouble.” 

Said and done, and the next morning they enter the red room together. He listens intently as she explains the monitors and displays and buttons, head cocked to the side, his line of sight following her fingers as she points it all out to him. There's nothing more than static, the ether silent like it has been for years. But he sits by her side, his eyes flitting from here to there like hers do, focused and attentive like she is until it's time to go to lunch, and then again later for the whole of the second shift. 

From there on in, they don't leave each others side at all. They get up together, eat together, work together, and only part when it's time to go to bed. 

 

***

 

She kisses him about a month after he’s first arrived – puts a hand on his arm on their way from the red room to the kitchen, presses her lips to his when he stops dead and looks at her questioningly. He freezes, his hands coming up to grip her wrists, and pushes her away. 

“What are you doing?” he asks, eyes narrowed. 

Natasha takes a step back, gaze falling to the floor, her heart beating faster. “I like you.”

That seems to throw him. He makes a step forward, as if he wants to close the distance between them, stares at her blankly for a moment before he replies. “I like you too. But I don't... Did you ever have anyone else here? I mean. A man. Do you even know... Fuck.” 

It makes her angry, an unfamiliar emotion that rises within her all of a sudden and wants to explode outwards. She's lost control of herself since he showed up, a whirl of feelings and wants and fears that she didn't know taking hold, and that angers her too. “No. But that doesn't mean I don't know what I want. I'm not a child.” 

“Didn't say you were.” He does close up to her again now, takes her hand in his. “I need to process this. Think about it. And I need you to think about it as well. To be sure.” 

She wants to keep being angry, accuse him of being patronizing and not taking her seriously, but there's a glint in his eyes that says he's concerned, he's confused, out of his depth, and she can't. The anger flows out of her as quickly as it’s risen, leaving her empty, drained. 

Natasha huffs, and turns, but doesn't yank her hand away. She heads towards the kitchen – it's lunch time after all, and they're on a schedule. He follows her wordlessly. 

 

*** 

 

He falls ill a few days later. The cough he never fully lost gets worse, violent hacking that sounds painful and brings tears to his eyes due to its sheer force. He develops a fever. His eyes glaze over, and if he doesn't sleep he talks to people who aren't there, possibly died years ago. 

There's medicine in the storage, but Natasha doesn't know which is the right one or how much he'll need. She never gets sick. She panics, abandons her post for two days straight in order to keep him warm and feed him spoonfuls of instant soup if he's lucid enough to comprehend what she wants from him. If he's not, she resorts to keeping him warm and clinging to him and praying to a deity no one ever taught her to believe in, begging it not to take him away. 

By the time his fever breaks, she's as sweaty and exhausted as he is. He stirs in her arms, blinks and looks at her in a way that tells her he remembers where he is and who he's with, eyes shining with recognition, and she's so relieved she wants to cry. 

 

***

 

“Do you remember,” Natasha asks as they lie tangled up in each other after her shifts, his head resting on her stomach and her hands carding through his hair, “what the world was like before?”

He’s quiet for a long moment, a loaded kind of silence, as if the air’s crackling with words yet unsaid. His answer, when it does come, is but a whisper. “Kinda.” 

“Tell me about it.” It’s not the sort of reply that invites further inquiry, but Natasha is curious. “Was it warm where you grew up? Do you still know what your parents looked like?” 

“It was warm, yes.” His is voice soaked in reluctance, hesitant and low. But he’s indulging her, and Natasha drinks in every word. “We lived in the country, small town, old farm turned family home, surrounded by fields. All kinds of corn, some rapeseed I think. Vegetables, but fewer. In the summer, all you could see for miles would be the crops, green and yellow, swaying in a light breeze. Some cows grazing in between. The sun high in the sky. It was so warm that we – my brother and me – went to a nearby stream to take off our shoes and socks and let our legs dangle in it to cool down.”

Natasha tries to imagine it, but doesn’t quite succeed. All that comes to her are her own faded memories of grass and a lake. She never saw fields, and if she ever saw an actual cow she doesn’t remember. “Your brother, is he still alive?” 

"I don’t know,” he says, his voice breaking on the last word and getting lost in a dry cough. He’s doing better, but not well. It takes him a minute or two to calm his breathing down enough so he can speak again. “We lost track of each other a few months before the cold came. I like to imagine that he’s made it, stubborn, resilient fool that he was, but... What are the chances?” 

She wants to know all there is to know about him, get him to tell her all his stories, but she’s neither cruel nor selfish enough prompt him for more. She fills the silence that falls between them herself. “I don’t think I had siblings. In my memories, it’s always just me, father and mother. I hardly even remember _them_ , but I do know that I loved them very much.” 

He lifts his head, gazes up. His eyes are faraway when they find hers, lazed with what she thinks is old pain – settled and scabbed over, but not stripped of its sting. “I wish we could make a trade. That you could remember yours, and I’d forget mine.” 

Natasha’s searching for something to say in reply, something that wouldn’t sound hollow and dumb. She’s relieved from trying when he coughs again, this one getting caught in his lungs, persistent. He curls into her as his whole body shudders and cramps. She sits up, gathering him in and rubbing up and down his back, murmuring soothing words in Russian because she can’t quite find the right ones in English. There isn’t much else she can do. 

 

***

 

In the early days, Natasha knows, there were storms. Vicious and merciless, destroying everything in their path. They were the harbingers of the cold, the commander used to say; wild hordes that ravaged the land before the cold claimed what was left. It’s how she thinks of his illness, some days, against her will. 

Because it won’t be like that. He will recover. He’s even taken to joining her for her shifts again, sitting beside her and watching her as keenly as she watches her screens and displays. It’s like he can’t get enough, like he’s high on it, losing himself in the sight of her. If she allows it, lets herself be distracted, it makes her head swim. No one has ever looked at her like this, and no one else ever will.

They go to bed together now too, sleep wrapped up in each other. This is the reason why she suggests, one evening as they pass the door to his quarters when they’re heading for hers, that they might just as well share just one of them. “It’s the smart thing to do,” she says. “Saves resources.” 

“Saving resources,” he parrots, amused glint in his eyes she wants to keep there forever. “Of course.” 

But he nods, and they go ahead and move the clothes she gave him and the bag he brought to her quarters, sealing his back up after they’re done. He kisses her while the mechanical voice blares out the room number and announces the deactivation of life support, advising all personnel to clear the room and retreat to their own quarters as it counts down to zero. 

 

***

 

There isn’t much of a prelude to it, the night he makes her a woman. An old-fashioned term, from one of her books, outdated and possibly insulting, but Natasha likes how deferential it sounds. Besides, it’s not even he who finally leads them down this path. She does, decides she’s done waiting for him to make a move – after all, this isn’t the nineteenth century. No matter how much she likes it in fiction, in reality she’s not going to pass on something she wants just because it might not be considered her place to try and reach for it, play by the rules of a society that has ceased to exist anyway. 

She lets her fingers dance over his knee, bare underneath their shared blanket, and up the inside of his thigh, unhurried, giving him every opportunity to stop her if he so chooses. But he doesn’t. She feels his muscles tense under her touch, hears him breathe in deep, but there’s no protest, he’s not drawing away, and so she continues on. Wraps her hand around him, through the fabric of his underwear, with gentle pressure, until he takes her hand away and places it on the sheet, by her hip. Natasha’s momentarily worried that she did something wrong, but he smiles at her, kisses her hair and her forehead, eyes glazed, his expression fond rather than chiding. He flips them, strips off her panties and shirt and motions for her to lay down. She does, her whole body poised with anticipation as he pushes her legs apart. A brief moment of shame, or uncertainty, born from the fact that he’s the first to ever see her like this, naked and open, but she swallows it down. All of that is forgotten, anyway, when he kneels and his mouth closes around her, licking, sucking ever so slightly, the noise of it a little obscene. His hand wanders up her hip, her stomach, taking hers and lacing their fingers together. Pleasure shudders through her, builds and builds, has her gasping and writhing, and just when she thinks she can’t stand it anymore it culminates and releases. 

He lets off, shucks his underwear as he crawls back up her body to kiss her messily, the taste of her still on his tongue. His hands on her skin are like an electrical current, leaving goosebumps and a slight tingle wherever they touch; her arms, breasts, stomach. Their eyes lock when he lines up between her legs, and at her nod, he pushes in very carefully, the effort of keeping himself at bay, taking his time, painted all over his face. The feeling of him, inside her, is alien at first – not in a bad way, but nevertheless strange and new. 

He kisses her again. And then he starts to move. 

Every nerve ending is still sensitive and receptive from when he brought her off with his mouth, and the friction, now, has the world go white at the edges. She’s in the eye of a storm. He’s the only thing in there with her – his slow, long thrusts and his smell and the way he’s breathing hard but differently than when he was sick. She holds him close, feels the muscles in his lower back work as he moves in, out, in again. 

Natasha wants to cry out when she comes, but he steals it away, kisses her quiet and then bites his tongue through his own orgasm, even though there’s no one around to hear them. 

 

***

 

She sits on their bed, cross-legged, the cat curled up at her feet. The room is still dark, it’s long before her shift and the station is still on nighttime. He’s asleep behind her, his body pressed to the far wall, his breathing the only sound in the room, reverberating from the tiled walls. There’s an echo to it, on every exhale, dry and scratchy as if the air’s pressed through too narrow a space, and she hates that she’s gotten used to it. 

She turns, runs her hand down his rib cage. He can keep some food down by now, but not enough to make him gain back weight. It’s like he’s falling through her grasp, no matter how hard she tries to hold on, fading away further every single day. Hope is a tough thing to kill, but Natasha isn’t stupid. He’s not getting better. 

Giving the cat an apologetic scratch, she unfolds her legs and lies back down beside him. His eyes blink open, and he looks at her, sleep-dazed. “Good morning.” 

“Sorry I woke you,” she says, brushing the hair off his forehead. Since he arrived, it’s grown longer, a bit of a mop. Maybe she should try and give it a trim. “Go back to sleep.” 

He lifts the covers so she can slip underneath, draws her close. “Nah. It’s okay.” 

They lie like that for several minutes before he shifts and sits up. She does the same, peering at him, but he doesn’t explain. Instead, he presses his lips to her temple and gets up, turns up the lights. After some puttering around, he returns with his bag. 

Natasha has often been tempted to see what it contains, but considered it private, not hers to see until he shows her. And that’s what he’s doing now, setting it down on both their laps and unzipping it. The content doesn’t make much sense to her at first – it looks like debris, actually, as if someone took the whole thing and smashed it. She eventually identifies the fledgling of an arrow, not out of wood but some sort of plastic, broken down the middle, several more pieces that look the same, and the remnants of what she figures was once a bow. 

He follows her gaze. “Would you believe me if I told you I once worked in the circus?” 

“Well,” she replies. “Did you?” 

“Archery for show. Terrible way to make a living, but good training.” His hands reach into the bag, caressing the broken bow. “When the cold came I used it for hunting at first, before it became too bad to be outside without a snow suit. Can’t draw a bow in these things.” 

Natasha keeps forgetting that, contrary to her, he’s old enough to recall the time before the cold. “Oh.” 

“But that’s not what I wanted to show you.” He digs past the weaponry. “There’s something... wait a second.” 

She watches as he gives the bag a shake, digs around some more, and eventually produces a book: large hardcover, cracked at the spine, old and weathered. The imprint reads _Lord Of The Rings_. She’s never heard of it. 

He holds it out to her. “I want you to have it.”

“I have enough books,” she says, something in her refusing to accept this. It feels like a parting gift, like he’s passing something on, and she has no interest in that. She wants him around, wants him to fight to stay alive. She doesn’t want any keepsakes. “You only have the one.” 

He sighs, his eyes pleading. “Someone once gave it to me, and now I’m giving it to you. Take it.” 

Reluctantly, she does, turns it in her hands, feels the imprint with her fingertips, opens it, flips through the first few pages. There’s an inscription, childish chicken scratch: _’From Barney. Don’t give up, don’t let ‘em win. If a dumb little hobbit can save the world, brother, then you can save yourself and get out of here.’_. 

She wants to cry. She looks up at him, pulls him in for a kiss. “Thank you.” 

 

***

 

He gets worse not long after that. Stops eating altogether, develops a wet note to his cough. A few times each night, he has to get up, and she can hear him dry-heave in the bathroom. He’s dangerously thin, and they both know he’s not far away from the point when his gaunt body won’t have the stamina to keep fighting anymore. 

Natasha knows he wishes for it, although he’d never tell her. 

She hasn’t been in the red room for a week. She can’t bring herself to feel bad for it. Her world has shrunk down even further, to this room, to him and the bed and the damn cat. Sometimes she wonders if she cursed him when she let him in, but she knows that he was doomed before he ever set eyes on Liho. There’s nothing mythical about this. He’s dying the same death that thousands, millions, died before him, falling victim to the unrelenting cold. 

When the end comes, she holds him close. He’s pale, a sickly green tinge to his skin, his sunken eyes staring at her, full of sorrow and apologies. She wants to tell him he’s stupid. She has thought about it a lot and decided that even if she knew, if he’d told her he was going to be taken from her, back on the very first day, she’d still have brought him in. She wouldn’t have done a damn thing differently. 

Another violent coughing fit wrecks his body, bright red blood bubbling past his lips and staining the pillow, which is white like the endless snow outside. She imagines the wild animals he told her about, legs going out from under them after he’s made his shot, their blood spilling out as they fall, and she gives up on trying to hold back tears. 

He takes in a last, dragging breath, and then he stills in her arms.


End file.
